Triage
by mew-tsubaki
Summary: Oneshot. Bishop and Torres, under fire. -—Or, how not to get together. *light T for language* *my 750th story on FFN! :D*


**Triage**

An NCIS oneshot

by mew-tsubaki

Note: The _NCIS_ characters belong to Donald P. Bellasario, not to me. I can't wait for s17 to give me all the Ellick feels~ -w- Read, review, and enjoy!

\- ^-^3

Bishop nodded, mostly to herself, as they approached the front door of the colonial before them. "Right. So, remember that, for now, Lieutenant Griffin is only a person of interest—"

Torres didn't scoff, but he couldn't help the roll of his eyes. "'Person of interest'—still can't believe we have to say that crap. 'Person of interest' is _literally_ the definition of 'suspect.'"

"Torres!" Bishop hissed.

He threw his hands up in mock-surrender before relaxing and knocking on the front door. "Lieutenant Sean Griffin, NCIS," he called through the door.

When silence greeted them, Torres knocked again, two quick pounds on the door—and the latch slipped, opening the door wide enough for both of them to enter. The agents exchanged a wary look and unholstered their guns, with Torres as point and Bishop on his six.

Aged wooden floors gave away their presence with a squeak or a groan every few steps, despite Torres rolling carefully on his feet, heel to ball, heel to ball, never letting his weight shift solely to one end. Behind him, Bishop was a touch less graceful but did well to keep quiet by sliding her feet mainly to the quiet boards Torres confirmed.

They cleared each room at a steady but brisk pace. Foyer, eat-in kitchen, living room, bathroom, two closets. No sound came from upstairs, but a door off the kitchen was cracked open and, with a glance, Torres spied a staircase.

"Because I really wanted my entering-a-creepy-basement exercise today," he grumbled lowly.

"If anyone's home, they wouldn't've been able to leave through the back door without us hearing," Bishop pointed out from right by his shoulder. "And the silence upstairs…"

He nodded. They had to pick where to clear next.

A soft thud below floated up the basement stairwell.

"Basement it is," Torres stated.

Several slit-sized windows marked the perimeter of the space, casting hazy light throughout the room and even onto the wooden steps they descended. They took each step slowly, Torres checking for tripwires not because he expected tripwires but because that was the kind of "lucky straw" he tended to draw on the job.

They made it to the concrete floor without incident, but searching for the lieutenant was going to be a pain in the ass. There was junk down here—and a lot of it—but it was in rows, almost like the shelves of a convenience store. Holiday decorations, empty milk crates, books and newspapers, odds and ends, collectibles glasses, bottles of wine, emergency rations…the list went on, and it became apparent that the space might even be wider than the footprint of the house above it.

Bishop aimed her weapon and a small flashlight towards a back corner bookended by shelves of ceramics. "I think the sound came from here," she whispered.

Torres turned her way. "Please let this be a cat—"

"_**Nick**_!"

His mind went blank, catching up seconds later after Bishop tackled him as someone opened fire on them, spraying bullets back and forth and making it impossible to take cover. But they hadn't even had the chance to take cover yet, because the force of Bishop's tackle sent them flying, rolling into the various junk they'd surveyed a moment before, all the while debris rained over them as the bullets hit everything but the special agents.

Torres ached all over, and he groaned while Bishop picked her head up. "Lieutenant Griffin!" she shouted. "Federal agents! We want to talk to you about your friend!"

The gunfire stopped only long enough for Griffin to choke out a sob. "…no…no, you don't! And I'm not going to jail for wanting to make ends meet by arming good people!"

Bishop ducked as the gunfire started anew.

"Guess we just found one of the missing automatic rifles from the contractor shipment," Torres remarked. He kept his eyes closed, and Bishop clung to him, tucking her head under his chin.

"Not the time for jokes, Nick," she hissed into his shirt.

"Not joking. Now can we call him a suspect?"

He heard her huff while Lieutenant Griffin reloaded and then proceeded to empty a new clip.

Torres shuffled backwards on his back, towards a bookshelf. Light from the window closest to them fell across them on their side of the aisle, still keeping them out of the lieutenant's view but allowing Torres to get a good look at him and Bishop. The dirt, he expected. But the red— "Shit, Ellie, you're hurt."

"What? No, I'm not!"

"Yes, you _are_. There's red in your hair and by your ear."

"I'm not in pain. We probably just rolled in something, Nick. Didn't you hear the glass and the metal? It's either paint or wine." She swatted his hands away as his arms left her so he could check her head. "Save it for later when we're not so busy trying to stay alive!"

"Well, bleeding out is a crappy way to die, so either way—" He dropped the argument, focusing instead on threading his fingers gingerly through her hair, picking out whatever debris he found and making certain he didn't end up with glass in his trigger finger. The sound of gunfire died down to a low buzz in his mind as his heart raced, but the fear of finding something worse than a graze along her scalp helped steady him.

"Nick, come _on_!" she yelled at him over the noise.

"Hey, we have a McGee, but you're also our brain," he reminded her. The top and sides of her head were fine, and he checked the hollow at the base of her skull.

"We seriously can deal with this later!"

"We're not going anywhere anytime soon!" He held her face in both his hands so their eyes met. "But if you have a pack of cards in one of your pockets, then please."

He felt her grumble rather than heard it. "You've got red on you, too."

It occurred to him to protest that he wasn't in pain, but, seeing as how they'd just gone through this scenario, the roles were reversed now, and he sighed while Bishop did the same quick check of his head. "Hey, it's not as bad if we lose me; the team only loses its best-looking mem—"

Bishop cut him off with a kiss, steadying him with his face in her hands.

Just like that, the noise of their surroundings came rushing back to him as if someone had cranked the volume all the way up.

Bishop broke away and patted his cheeks twice. "Neither of us is hurt, and the gunfire has stopped—I can still hear his footsteps, so can we go already?" She raised her eyebrows.

Torres nodded.

She helped him up, and they hurried to the stairs, up the stairs, giving chase. But Lieutenant Griffin already had hopped in his car and sped down the road by the time they exited the house. Even rushing to their car was pointless; the lieutenant had paused long enough to slash one of their tires, effectively stranding them.

"You've gotta be kidding me…!" Torres ran his hands through his hair. "Now we've gotta call Gibbs and tell him we lost the suspect!" He turned to his partner. "You're really calling him?"

"What? No!" Bishop covered the receiver on her phone. "I'm calling the tow truck company first. Then…rock-paper-scissors for who has to call Gibbs."

He narrowed his eyes at her.

She hung up a moment later. "…or I could text McGee the situation, have him smooth things over."

"We're batting a thousand today, aren't we?" Torres sighed and gave a noncommittal shrug. "By the way, uh…good job."

"For what?"

"On getting me to shut up earlier." He scratched his jaw and eyed the ground. He didn't really have anything better to offer now that his brain had caught up with him for the second time that day, now that he had the minute to spare and dwell on the thought that usually Bishop was the one with the clear head…and he tried not to linger on the tactic she'd used.

Bishop said nothing. But she didn't step away from him or fidget either. She waited until he met her eyes, and then she shook her head at him. "That was also a 'thank God Nick is safe' kiss, genius." When she raised her eyebrows this time, there was a softness in her expression—not exactly humor, but maybe playful and, at the same time, sincere.

He wasn't sure which one it was, so he blamed both her words and her stare for his heart hammering in his chest and subsequently jumping into his throat. As a result, his only response was to reach for her and pull her close, hugging her tight and not letting her go.

She chuckled and hugged him back, tucking her face in by his collarbone.

Torres sighed. "So, that's it? I'm not crazy? You are, because you like me, too?"

"Considering the number of close calls this past year, this was the straw that broke the camel's back." Her nose was by his neck, her breath on his skin. "I want no regrets. I wanted you to know."

He threaded his fingers together at the small of her back. He didn't even care anymore if the daze he was in was from the adrenaline of being shot at for the umpteenth time or from his and Bishop's anti-climactic turn of events. He just— "…I kinda expected something bigger. Fireworks or something."

Bishop picked her head up and stared at him in disbelief. But at least she was smiling. "I'm not proposing, Nick, just telling you how I feel. And being under fire wasn't big enough?"

He paused, thinking back on the last several minutes in the house, down in the basement, when he was most worried she had a head injury and the relief he felt when he confirmed she was all right. And he hugged her even tighter. "…nah, it was perfect."

\- ^-^ 3

**:D Ellick's a rather dramatic couple, so I love the idea of them getting together in, as Torres noted, an anti-climactic way. The visual of this story idea just makes me smile, too—not only them having to snuggle essentially while taking cover, *lol*, but of the hug at the end because hugs are everything! -w- Even if they don't explicitly make Ellick canon in s17, I need more skinship with them. Just. More affection. Orz This also strikes me as smthg interesting to draw, like a quick comic, but ARGHHHH the detail I'm picturing would drive me nuts. ;w; ****plus i'm still tryna figure out how to draw her oops**

**Thanks for reading, and please review! Check out my other **_**NCIS**_** fics if you liked this.**

**-mew-tsubaki c:**


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